Privacy

Anyone signing up for Facebook must agree to the social network’s Terms of Use, which opens user-generated data to everything from data analytics to product testing. The majority of the time, Facebook keeps its capitalization (some might call it exploitation) of user data firmly in the background; your postings might end up used in a system-wide test, but you’ll never know about it. So it was surprising when, over the weekend, news leaked that Facebook had manipulated the news feeds… continue…

Google wants its developer community to pick through its latest Chrome extension, End-to-End, for potential vulnerabilities. End-to-End, currently in Alpha release, allows users to encrypt, decrypt, digitally sign and verify signed messages within the browser. It implements the OpenPGP standard, IETF RFC 4880. As part of its security process, Google has posted the source code on code.google.com, and it wants those with the skills to give it a thorough looking-over. Click here to see security jobs. “One of the reasons… continue…

The Secret Service is in the market for software capable of detecting sarcastic language online, according to the Washington Post. In a note posted on FBO.gov, the agency indicated that it wants a software tool that can perform real-time stream analysis, sentiment and trend analysis, audience and geographic segmentation, access to historical Twitter data and “ability to detect sarcasm and false positives,” among other attributes. Click here to see jobs involving sentiment analysis. “Our objective is to automate our social-media… continue…

On the Internet, the truism goes, content lingers forever. But now Google—under pressure from the Court of Justice of the European Union—will give anyone living in the EU the opportunity to delete the search-engine results leading to that content. Thanks to the Court’s recent ruling, EU citizens can ask Google to remove results on the grounds of the associated links being “inadequate, irrelevant or no longer relevant, or excessive in relation to the purposes for which they were processed.” Click… continue…

Almost six months after a hacker collective breached Target’s cyberdefenses and made off with millions of customers’ personal data, Target CEO Gregg Steinhafel has chosen to resign, effective immediately. Target’s lengthy official statement on the matter is full of those standard-issue statements that usually accompany an executive departure (“The board is deeply grateful to Gregg for his significant contributions and outstanding service,” and so on), except for the one portion that hints at Steinhafel assuming responsibility for the attack: “Most… continue…

Ever wondered how much of your personal data a company could mine in a couple seconds, from one source? Head on over to Digital Shadow (“You are not an individual,” the homepage boasts. “You are a data cluster”), a website built to promote the new video game Watch Dogs, and—if you’re feeling adventurous on this fine Friday—click the big blue button that allows you to log in with Facebook. The website will proceed to scrape everything from your Facebook friends… continue…